High fluence boron implantation into polymers

100 keV B+ ions are implanted at high fluence into three polymers of technological importance and into a polymeric mixture, respectively. The boron depth distributions are measured by the neutron depth profiling technique. It is shown that the boron atoms redistribute after their implantation according to the nuclear (collisional) energy transfer distribution. This contrasts to low fluence implantation, where the boron atoms redistribute according to their electronic energy transfer distributions. Subsequently, the samples are annealed isochronally. The change of the boron depth profiles with annealing temperature is then evaluated to determine the diffusional, trapping and detrapping behavior of the boron atoms. At, or slightly above room temperature, intrinsic boron impurities of the examined polymer foils become mobile and getter in the ion-implanted region. At higher temperatures, the thermal desorption spectra show a nearly continuous desorption of both the implanted and gettered boron, with no pronounced desorption peaks. Due to the high polymeric destruction yield, the different polymers show little difference in their desorption behavior.